Today’s post is a guest post by Matt Cook. Matt is a dedicated member of the team at ABC Selfstore; when Matt isn’t behind his desk thinking about innovative storage methods he can often be found obsessively organizing his home.

The Online Seller’s Storage Dilemma

With recent advances in technology less of us are selling our wares in person and are instead taking to the internet in order to run our businesses from home. However, there are many issues regarding running a business from home; if you’re selling on websites such as eBay, Amazon or Etsy, or perhaps you have your own ecommerce site you may find that as your business develops and expends that you quickly begin to run out of storage space. If you find yourself faced with this problem the options below may be of some use to you.

Home Storage

One of the first things that you should do when setting up an online shop or ecommerce website is to locate an area within your house that you could utilize to store your products or items that you wish to sell. If you have an abundance of products you could store a small percentage in an easily accessible room and the rest could be placed within a loft or basement area for use at a later date.

However, if there simply isn’t room within your home it’s also possible that you could erect a shed or outhouse within your garden. This shed our outbuilding must be secured in order to protect your products as thieves could attempt to steal your products if they are not kept secure and away from prying eyes, as well as weather proof.

A garage is another alternative to storing your stock within your home; if you place your items in a garage they will be out of the way but remain just a short distance from where you will be working.

Family and Friends

If you do not trust in the safety of a shed and cannot store your stock within your own home you should make an attempt at reaching out to family and friends for their aid; politely inquire as to whether you can keep some of your stock at their home as you do not have enough space within your own.

However, this is not a useful alternative if your family or friends do not live close to where you live or where you are running your business from; you need to be able to store your products in a location that is within easy reach so that if you have to send products in bulk you can gain access to them quickly.

External Storage Facilities

By hiring a self-storage facility you can store a large amount of products within one location. This method of storing your stock can be utilized if there simply isn’t enough space within your home or if your family and friends refuse to assist you in your endeavours.

Although an external storage facility is a wise choice you need to ensure that you select a storage facility that is near to your home or the location that you will be running your business from. If the storage facility is nearby you won’t waste too much time, money or energy collecting or dropping off your stock.

If you are considering the use of a self-storage facility it’s recommended that you maintain a continuous supply of products within your home to make it a little easier to run your business and avoid unnecessary traveling fees.

The key to storage is to utilize space effectively and organize all items or products efficiently so that they can be found and accessed in a convenient way. For more information on storing excess stock and making the most of space you should experiment with different methods of storing your products or contact your local storage facility.

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Matt doesn’t mention it in his article, but another advantage of Storage facilities is that they are located at commercial addresses. Many wholesale suppliers will not ship to a residence, but leasing space at a storage facility is a great place to not only store your merchandise, but you can receive it there as well. I have an arrangement with my local storage facility, that when products arrive, they put them in my locker and give me a call to let me know my things arrived. ~ Skip McGrath